Social Hierarchy Flashcards
Senatorial class (including women and children)
No such thing as a poor senator (but you could be wildy in debt)
No peasant ever became senator
We know mostly about the men
Women had more power than a peasant say, but not great for them either (like the Cicero-boyfriend-murder-trial)
Equestrian class ( including women and children)
Difference = senate were in politics, while originally equestrian went to war on horses, and then later went to being men of business
Could be ridiculously wealthy
Engaged in business (not supposed to really?)
Free poor Romans
Could vary in poverty, like not knowing where your next meal is from
If you were really poor you wouldn’t have slaves, but at the same time its like car ownership – kind of a necessity
Life expectancy in urban Rome was lower than a gladiator
Freedmen and freewomen
Probably better off than Free Poor Romans
You kind of owed to your former master (patron & client) so they were somewhat owed something by their former master
Children were considered free
The enslaved (men, women, children)
Sent to the mines was like a death sentence, called chain gangs
It could not be too bad if you worked in a household
No one wanted to be a slve, but sometimes the alternative was worse
There were massive slave revolts, they would prevent it by keeping them in underground slave prisons for sleeping purposes
“The Struggle of the Orders”
Legnthy confilct between patricians and the plebeians.
The most notable events of struggle of the order were a series of secessions of the plebs (more on slide)
494 BC: The victorious Roman army jad just reached the gates of Rome after defeating the Etruscans, when the the plebeian soldiers herad that theur demands for reform had just been rejected by the senate, they deserted their patrician generals and withdrew to the Sacred Mount (a hill near Rome) The plebs chose 2 tribunes to lead them and made them sacrosanct (they could be arrested or attacked). They pledged to kill anyone to touched them.
449 BC: The board of 10 lawmakers (who’d been tasked with writing down the 12 Tables) tried to remove the most previously won plebeian rights.
The plebs seceeded to the Avantine and the Caitoline hills.
They held an assembly (eventuallu called the Council of the Plebs), chose new tribunes( perhaps 4 thes time).
287 BC: The plebs to Janiculum hill until the pats agree the council of the plebs would be binding on all Romans, thus giving them the force of the law.
